The Devil and Ms. Moody (16 page)

“That’s it,” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear. “Stay with me, baby. Stay with me.”

Edwina was dreamily aware of the circular motion of his hand as he pleasured her. Seconds later, she drew in a sharp breath as he began to give equal time to the back of her anatomy. Her eyes came open as his fingers trailed over her hips and finally her buttocks, arousing the nerve-rich area. She stiffened, astonished at the lightning reactions.

A sudden urgency flared in Edwina. She couldn’t hold still under the drift of his fingers. His touch was drenchingly erotic on her skin. A soft insistent throb swelled inside her, and she began to move in response to its steady pressure. It seeped into her consciousness, that hot sweet throb, saturating her.

His breath was hot against her ear. “Open your legs for me. Princess.”

She felt his knee press against the inside of her thigh and responded without thinking. Warm silky water rushed through her legs as she opened them, and suddenly his hand was there, caressing her thigh where his knee had been. She stifled a gasp of pleasure. He knew just how to touch her, just
where
to touch her! His strokes were slow and murmurous, drawing up sensations she could hardly bear, they were so sharp.

Edwina felt deep muscles pull tight inside her.

“Easy, Princess,” he said, gentling the nape of her neck with kisses. He continued to run his fingers along the back of her legs, sprinkling sensations along her inner thighs. And then he eased her body forward slightly and began to touch her in ways she’d never been touched.

He locked an arm around her waist, holding her gently, but even if he hadn’t held her, she would have been helpless against such forbidden stimulation. “It’s all right,” he said as she let out a shocked sound. “This is all I want for now, Princess. Just to touch you.”

His hands brought her the most riveting kind of pleasure she’d ever known and something much more urgent. Her body went soft and wet and languid under his caressing, probing fingers. Desire. She was melting in a spring flood of desire.

“You’re made just like the flower, Princess,” he said. “Soft and pink and sweet.”

He explored the satin folds and petals until she was weak with need. And then he delved deeper. Edwina gasped as he began to probe, long fingers caressing her inside and out. Deep muscles clenched urgently, and her tender parts throbbed with pleasure. Unable to stop herself, she began to answer the slow beat of his strokes with a writhing motion.

Diablo knew a violent wrench of excitement as she moved against him. He’d never experienced a woman more female, more urgently sensual. He could almost take his pleasure in just giving to her. Almost. His body ached with the need to know a woman’s secrets again. He’d denied himself for far too long, and the heat of sexual conquest was in his blood.

She breathed an agonized sound as he tried to withdraw. “No!” she cried, her muscles fluttering and tightening around him. His jaw muscles clenched as he left the silken vault and pulled her up against him.

“It’s okay, Princess,” he said, tilting her head back for a kiss. She tasted of springwater and desire. It was crazy, but at the moment she tasted like everything he’d ever wanted in life. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said.

“Me too.” She pressed her lips to his. “Make love to me. Make love to me until I can’t breathe.”

He tried to draw her around to face him, but she resisted. “No, like this,” she said.

Diablo was rocked by surprise. She wanted it this way? From behind? Everything that had been sensual and slow before suddenly became immediate and urgent. There could be no more delaying, no more holding back.
He had to have her.

“Yes ...
” She breathed out the word as he pressed her upper body forward and caught her by the hips to steady her. He found her silky heat almost immediately, as though some instinctive primal force were guiding him. The urgency between his legs became a hard throb as he probed her gently, readying her until the pain and pressure of his own body drove him wild.

A fierce sound welled in his throat as he braced her with his hands and eased into the heat of her. She gasped softly, and for one blissful second they were on their way to heaven. And then he met the sweetest, tightest resistance he’d ever known in a woman.

“Easy, baby,” he said, caressing her hips and thighs with his hands. She was built small, but he’d had no reason to think she couldn’t accommodate him. He knew she wanted him. He thrust again, and she let out a soft excited sound.

“Relax, Princess,” he said, grasping her by the waist. But even as he repositioned her, he knew it wasn’t going to work. She
couldn’t
relax. She was frantic. He pressed into her again, but the thrusting only aroused her more, and she gave out a sharp cry of frustration.

“I’m sorry. Princess,” he said, releasing her. He pulled her into his arms and shushed her with kisses and tender words. “Give me a chance, baby. We’ll make it right.”

A moment later he had her wrapped in a blanket from the saddlebags. The grotto was studded with soft beds of ferns, and he settled her on the nearest one.

“Let’s start this all over,” he said.

Edwina gazed into his eyes and saw a tenderness there she’d never seen before. He looked so ruggedly handsome that something gave way inside her. Heat stung her eyelids, and she blinked away moisture that might have been tears. No, she wasn’t crying. She just wanted him so badly, she thought she was going to die, that was all.

Diablo saw the flicker of hurt in her eyes, and it stabbed at him. “What is it, Princess?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I just want you to make love to me!” She touched her fingers to his parted lips, and her voice trembled. “Would you do that, please?”

In that one naked moment, Diablo felt an emotion that he barely understood. He didn’t know its name, but it was squeezing his heart. Suddenly he was racked with tender feelings, confusing feelings. He wanted her so badly, it was like a knife turning in his gut, but he couldn’t hurt her. God, he wasn’t sure he could handle it if she cried.

Edwina saw his hesitation and grew quiet. His sensitivity was a wondrous thing to her, totally unexpected. A moment later she drew off the blanket that covered her body and gazed up at him in lush, silent invitation.

Diablo took in the creamy nakedness that had driven him crazy just moments before and felt a wrench of need in his groin. Lord help him, she was beautiful. Somehow the whisper of sadness in her eyes made her even more mesmerizing as she lay there before him, suppliant, waiting, her breasts glowing in the moonlight.

He moved over her and sampled her lips, a hunger rising in him. She arched and moaned, presenting him with such perfect breasts, he had to taste them too. He suckled her sweetly, assuaging one kind of hunger and feeding another. The hardness he pressed into her belly was an aching thing that he knew only one way to satisfy.

Edwina melted under his tender assault. She was beyond needing him. She yearned. She was delirious. And when at last he spread her legs and pressed himself against that tender, aching part of her, she breathed his name like a prayer.

His lips touched hers, and he entered her body slowly. So slowly. It was beautiful, nerve-racking pressure, throbbing love one inch at a time, and Edwina had never been so exquisitely possessed. The restraint showed in his features, making them more gaunt, more beautiful. The holding back was torture, and yet he continued his maddening pace, pressing into her, loving her a little at a time, waiting until her body yielded and took him completely.

But Edwina was impatient. She was urgent. She needed him there, fully there, and by the time he was, she was already in the throes of some glorious, torturous convulsion.

Diablo felt her peaking. He scooped her up and held her tightly, letting her cry and shatter around him. It robbed what was left of his will not to finish with her, but he needed more time in the grip of her beautiful body. He had held back so long that nothing could satisfy him now but a savage shuddering physical release. It wasn’t a choice anymore. It was a reflex as fundamental as breathing. He had to have her, he had to take her again and again, thrusting, thrusting until he was spent, not stopping until at last he had stamped out the fires raging in him.

As he laid her back down and gazed at her flushed face, he felt the power of what they were doing. And the risk. Something in her total acquiescence made him want to cover her face with kisses and whisper tender things to her. There was wonderment in her eyes, rapture in her sigh.

“I have to take you again. Princess—my way. I have to take you fast and hard and deep, or I’m going to die.”

She arched up and caught him as he drove into her. A cry ripped free, plaintive and primitive. In the vibrant collision of their bodies, Diablo had no idea who had made the sound. All he knew was a pure raging joy as he unleashed the wildness in him.

He rocked and thrust and drove into her with unbridled passion, fighting the inevitable as her sharp shuddering cries pushed him closer and closer to the brink. When at last he tumbled off, it was with a sense of falling uncontrollably, of cartwheeling through space. He was a blindfolded man who had stepped off the edge of the world.

“I
S THAT THE
Big Dipper?” Edwina asked. She rested her head on the arm Diablo had curved around her shoulders and looked up at the starry firmament. They were sitting up now, wrapped in the blanket for warmth, and Edwina was in an especially dreamy mood. She pointed toward a generous wedge of night sky ablaze with starfire.

Diablo followed the line of her finger and shook his head. “No ... that’s not the Big Dipper, but it looks a little like it. That’s Draco, the dragon star.”

She swung around to look at him. “You know astronomy?”

“I know the dragon star,” he said. “The Warlords consider it their lodestar.”

“Oh ...” She fell back against his arm, but her heart felt light, and her senses were alert. Chris Holt was an astronomy buff, and for a moment she’d thought—

She glanced again at Diablo’s features, remembering how nonchalantly he’d handled the snake. She’d assumed that with his Spanish nickname and long dark hair he had some Mexican or perhaps Indian blood. And yet those green eyes.

“A lodestar?” she questioned, studying his profile. “Isn’t that a bit philosophical for the Warlords?”

“The brothers are more evolved than you think,” he said, laughing, kissing her nose.

Edwina made a face and suppressed the answering smile that welled in her heart. It was hard to stay focused on anything serious when she was nestled next to a naked man in a blanket. Especially
this
man. He was warm and alive. He was certifiably real in a world that seemed like a misty soft-focused dream. All around them the cicadas sang their hearts out, and the waterfalls babbled like excited children. Edwina identified totally with the sweet riot of noise. She felt like an adolescent who’d been knocked for a loop by her first crush.

“Do we have to go back?” she said. “It’s so beautiful here.”

“We don’t have to do anything. Princess.”

He hugged her close, and there was such a wealth of husky conviction in his voice that Edwina’s throat tightened. He sounded as though he meant it, and in her heart she wanted to believe he did. Maybe it was crazy. Maybe it was moonlight and rarefied mountain air, but hidden away from the world as they were, she felt as though they could be the only two people on the planet. The last man and woman. Adam and Eve in some new incarnation.

Oh, Edwina,
she thought,
now you have lost your alleged mind.
She wanted to dismiss the idea, quickly, summarily, but that didn’t seem possible. Some untamed part of her heart wouldn’t let it go. The last man and woman. Making love, making babies, living off the land. She released a little sigh as she thought about how perfect it would be....

And how perfectly ridiculous. A fantasy, she told herself. She was a woman amusing herself with idle dreams and romantic whimsy. Too much time on the back of a motorcycle, undoubtedly. But even pitted against cold logic, the impulse wouldn’t be denied. She didn’t want to go back to camp or to the rodeo, or even to Connecticut. She wanted to stay right here, with him. Of course it was crazy. It was impossible. She had obligations, people depending on her, and yet she actually felt as though she wanted to be with him to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. It was like a fire burning deep in her heart, waiting to be fanned, pleading to be fanned. There was a word for what she was feeling, she realized, a dangerous word.
Longing.

“Are you shivering?” he asked, drawing the blanket around her.

She shook her head, but she was, of course. After a moment she drew the blanket off her shoulder and began to trace the tattoo, engrossed in its tongues of fire. “I guess it’s official, huh?”

He watched her for a while. “Yeah ... you’re mine.”

Edwina’s jaw muscles ached from her attempt not to smile. The fire burned a little higher in her heart as she dwelt in his eyes for one unguarded moment. “Maybe we ought to try it again soon,” she said. “The initiation, I mean. Just to make sure it took.”

He laughed softly. “Whenever you want. Princess.”

She blushed a little. “We didn’t actually finish what we started in the pool.”

“I think that has something to do with the way you’re built.”

Her answer came with a flashing grin. “Maybe it’s the way
you’re
built.”

He kissed her again, lightly, touching the bridge of her nose and working his way down to her lips. Long fingers combed into her hair, and things were just getting interesting when his mouth strayed from hers. “You do know that tomorrow’s the last day of the rodeo?”

Edwina nodded, terribly disappointed that he’d reminded her. But she also detected another response in her own quick expiration. Perhaps it was relief that he was bringing them both back to reality. Her fantasy world was getting dangerous.

“And you do have a man to track down, don’t you?” he added.

She looked up at him, surprised. “I thought you didn’t want me to talk about that?”